


A Name Like Henry

by Lomonaaeren



Series: From Litha to Lammas 2020 [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canonical Child Abuse, Family, Family Drama, Friendship, Gen, Harry Potter is a Malfoy, Not Canon Compliant - Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:55:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24842635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: Sequel to “How Like Hatred.” When Harry goes back to school after Christmas holidays as Henry Malfoy, he has to cope with friends, professors, and just about everyone else having an opinion on his new name and appearance. And that’s not to mention his smotheringly overprotective family.
Relationships: Albus Dumbledore & Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy & Harry Potter, Harry Potter & Ron Weasley, Lucius Malfoy & Harry Potter, Lucius Malfoy/Narcissa Black Malfoy, Narcissa Black Malfoy & Harry Potter
Series: From Litha to Lammas 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1795561
Comments: 223
Kudos: 1700





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the sequel to “How Like Hatred,” and really won’t make sense without having read that fic first. This one will have three parts and be posted over the new few days as part of my “From Litha to Lammas” fic series being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August this year.

Harry stared into the mirror and sighed. He had darkened his hair with a spell that he’d deliberately looked up in the library, but he still didn’t really look like himself—well, the way he _used_ to look before this all happened. The shape of his face was different, and he had a longer nose.

And there were the grey eyes.

“Henry, what are you doing?”

Harry glanced over his shoulder at Draco, who was leaning in the doorway of Harry’s bathroom and staring at him. “Trying to make myself look more like myself.”

“But this is the way you look.” Draco came up beside him so there were two slightly different faces in the mirror. “You’re my twin brother. And I know you’re uncomfortable,” he continued in a slightly gentler voice, slinging his arm around Harry’s shoulders. “But we compromised on your name, so we can compromise on your looks, too, right? And I’ll protect you from all the nasty bullies at school.”

Harry scowled at him. “You’re taking this big brother stuff too seriously for someone who’s only three minutes older.”

“It’s a whole _four_ minutes, Mother says.” Draco sniffed. “And look, I’m bigger anyway.” He stood on his toes to loom over Harry.

Harry rolled his eyes. He started to say something else, but Draco interrupted. “Are you going to tell us what happened to cause that?”

“Huh? No one cursed me to make me like that, if you mean that. Anyway, until this year you would have been the most likely to curse me like that.”

Draco snorted. “No, I didn’t mean that. I remember that you were a tiny thing when you showed up at the Feast.”

“I was _not_ a tiny thing—”

“So it must have been something that happened before Hogwarts, with _them_.” Draco never referred to the Dursleys by name. Then again, Harry thought, he couldn’t remember if he’d told his brother what it was. “What happened?”

Harry folded his arms. He knew what would happen if he told them that it was probably due to the Dursleys withholding food from him. Mrs. Malfoy would fuss over him, and Draco would step up the “big brother” nonsense until it was unbearable. And then Mr. Malfoy would probably go and try to kill the Dursleys or something.

Harry was coming to accept, slowly, that they were his family, but he wasn’t going to be responsible for something happening to innocent people. Well, mostly innocent. Well, innocent some of the time, anyway. Well, Dudley at least wasn’t the one who didn’t give him food, that was Uncle Vernon.

“Heeeenry.”

“If you ever want Parkinson to notice you, don’t whinge like that in front of her,” Harry said, raising his eyebrows.

Draco narrowed his eyes. “You know perfectly well I don’t want to date her. And _I_ know perfectly well what you’re doing. Deflecting. I want you to tell me what happened with those—Muggles. Tell me.”

Harry shook his head. “I don’t have to if I don’t want to,” he added, when he saw Draco opening his mouth again. “Mother said I don’t have to.” He was always careful to call Mrs. Malfoy Mother in front of Draco, to spare himself the lecture that he’d get otherwise. But he thought of her as Mrs. Malfoy in his head.

Draco opened his mouth, then shut it again, and suddenly gave him a look that was so unhappy Harry blinked. He’d once thought he would never see anything like that on Draco bloody Malfoy’s face.

“I’m worried about you,” Draco whispered. “I just want to know what happened and help you, Henry.”

Harry sighed and thought about saying that that name was part of the problem. He was Henry Malfoy to the Malfoys. He understood why, because someone named Sirius Black he’d never heard of before had talked under Veritaserum about stealing him away from the Malfoys and giving him to his mum and dad—the Potters. They didn’t want to call him Harry when it reminded them of the kidnapping.

But Harry thought of himself that way. He would probably always think of himself that way. He appreciated what the Malfoys were trying to do, but it was—weird. Not him.

“Maybe someday I’ll feel like telling you,” he said, and it wasn’t even a lie. Maybe someday he would.

He just didn’t think it was likely.

*

“Harry.”

Harry gave Ron a tense smile. They hadn’t got along as well as before, not since Harry had found out he was a Malfoy. “Hi, Ron.”

Ron stared at him for a second, then looked at the floor between his feet. They were on the Hogwarts Express, the train shaking a little as it rushed north. Harry had insisted on sitting in a compartment by himself, although he’d only managed that after like sixty warnings from Draco about what he should do if someone bothered him and a promise to come back in a little while.

Ron moved a toe back and forth. Then he gave a great sigh and came in and sat down on the seat across from Harry.

Harry let his smile widen hopefully. Ron peered at him out of the corner of his eye, then looked away again.

“You look like him when you smile,” he whispered. “But not the rest of the time.”

“I’m sorry, Ron. I’m _trying._ But I’m still me. Still Harry.”

“But Malfoy.”

“Yeah.” Harry leaned forwards a little. “Look, can we try to play chess or something? Maybe that’ll help us remember what it’s like to be friends.”

Ron went back to fiddling with the cuffs of his jumper. Scabbers snoozed in his lap. “Your dad attacked my dad in the bookshop a few months ago,” he muttered. “How am I supposed to forget that?”

Harry discovered a sudden edge of irritation that he hadn’t known was there. He sat back and scowled at Ron, who blinked at him in surprise. “What the hell am I supposed to do?” Harry snapped, partially happy when he remembered how Mr. Malfoy would frown at him if he swore like that. “I can’t get out of their custody, and I can’t go back to just being Harry Potter. My godfather _kidnapped_ me, Ron! My parents weren’t my parents! Don’t you think I’m upset about this, too? But I can’t _change_ things. And I think I have more right to be upset about that than you do about a fight in a bookshop.”

Ron was blinking rapidly at him. Harry leaned forwards. “If you don’t want to be my friend, don’t be my friend,” he said, and he knew he sounded tired. “I’ll—go sit with Hermione and the twins or something.” He started to stand up.

“Wait, Harry.” Ron reached his hand out, and Harry paused. He wanted to be friends with Ron _so badly._ He just couldn’t stand to hear all the “evil” things his parents had done before he even knew they were his parents. It wasn’t like Harry had been lying on purpose about who he was.

“I look at you and I see Draco,” Ron whispered. “I see the man who tried to get my father sacked. I see all the people I’ve been taught to hate. How can I just get over that overnight?”

“I don’t expect you to,” Harry said, turning around and frowning at him. “But it’s been more than two months now, Ron, and if you’re just going to mutter about me being evil or something, what friendship do we have? I don’t have to put up with someone who glares at me and is waiting for me to turn out not to be a real Gryffindor or something.”

He’d actually had a nightmare about that a week ago, where he told Mr. Malfoy that the Sorting Hat had wanted him in Slytherin and Mr. Malfoy made it happen. Harry was sick at the very thought. He wanted to go back to the Gryffindor common room. He wanted to listen to Hermione rant about some obscure point that she’d discovered in the index of _Hogwarts, a History._

He wanted Ron back.

Ron took a deep breath and looked at him. “I want you to be my friend, too.”

“The way I am, or the way you wish I was?”

Ron flinched a little, but his eyes were earnest. “The way you are. The friend who laughed and played Exploding Snap with me in September, and went up against a giant chess set with me last year. I want—I know that I can’t be friends with you unless I accept _all_ of you, and if that means accepting you as a Malfoy, I’ll do it.”

Harry smiled at him, so happy that it felt as if he was choking on sunshine. “That’s great, Ron. I want to be there with you, too.” He came back into the compartment and sat down. “And we _should_ play some chess, I think. Commemorate the game last year, huh?”

Ron chuckled and got out his chess set. Then he trounced Harry, the way he always did. Harry grinned at him, and Ron started lecturing him on all the ways that he could win “if you just paid attention, you can do it, Harry, I know you can.”

*

“Henry?”

Harry started and looked up. It took him a minute. Not only had he been listening to Ron explain a few more rules of chess that he insisted were simple, but the name still didn’t feel like his.

Draco stood in the door of the compartment, his face stiff. He stared at Ron, then nodded to Harry. “You should probably get your robes on, Henry. There was an announcement a minute ago that we’re only about five minutes from Hogwarts.” Then he shut the door behind him with a quietness that felt almost like he was leaving a funeral.

Harry scowled at the door before he stood up and reached for his robes. It wasn’t like _Draco_ had come back to the compartment to sit with Harry before Ron showed up, either. He’d left his trunk here and said that he would be “back in a little while,” but he’d spent the entire ride with his friends, not his bloody twin brother.

“Weasley,” Draco said, sounding as though he was about to choke, and then left.

“Henry?” Ron asked in a blank voice as he started getting his robes out of his trunk, too. Harry sighed, hoping they weren’t going to have to have the argument all over again.

“It’s what the Malfoys decided to call me,” he explained as he dragged the robes over his head and straightened the collar around his neck. “I really, really hated the name Aldebaran.” Ron snickered, and Harry smiled over his shoulder. “Yeah. But they didn’t want to keep the name Harry because that’s what my kidnappers called me.”

“Kidnappers? Really?” Ron was looking at him with a half-open mouth. Harry nodded.

“Yeah, we went to the Ministry and they questioned someone named Sirius Black. Who’s apparently my godfather?” Harry shook his head. The thought still bewildered him. “But he betrayed my parents—I mean, the Potters—and got sent to prison. But before he did that, he decided to kidnap one of the Malfoys’ twins and give him to the Potters.” It was still strange to realize that Harry was talking about _himself._ “They couldn’t have kids, apparently.”

“Wow.” Ron tilted his head. “So Henry is sort of a compromise?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you going to start going by that in Gryffindor?” Ron wrinkled his nose. “I reckon I can get used to it. It would be a little strange, though.”

Harry shook his head. “I understand why Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy don’t want to call me Harry, but I’m still going to go by that in Gryffindor. Just Draco and probably the professors have to call me Henry. I know Mr. Malfoy wrote them a letter about it. I think.”

“And you’re still going to call him Mr. Malfoy?” Ron seemed weirdly cheerful about that. “Not Dad?”

Harry gave a full-body shudder that he didn’t have to feign. “It would still be strange. And even then, Draco doesn’t call him _Dad._ It’s always Father.”

Ron nodded, thoughtful. “I reckon you didn’t change that much after all,” he said, with a hearty clap to Harry’s shoulder, and they got ready to leave the train as it slowed down.

*

“Mr. Malfoy? If you would come with me, please.”

Harry turned around and blinked in surprise when Professor McGonagall stopped him from going into the Great Hall. Ron already had, since he’d been in front of Harry, but Draco came to a silent stop behind him. He really had a penetrating stare when he wanted to.

“Er, all right, Professor.” Harry nodded to his brother and walked after her. Then he heard footsteps following him. He turned around and frowned at Draco.

Draco lifted his chin, although before he could say something, Professor McGonagall cut in. “I assure you, Mr. Malfoy, I will return…Aldebaran safely.”

“Henry,” Draco said firmly. “Did my father’s owl not reach you, Professor? I know he was going to send an owl to all the professors telling them the name we compromised on, so they would address Henry properly if they had to distinguish between us.”

Professor McGonagall blinked and pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. She looked honestly startled, which made part of Harry relax. She wasn’t ignoring his compromise name on purpose. “Your pardon, Mr. Malfoy. I did receive an owl, but it came during a particularly busy time and I didn’t read it thoroughly.”

“Yes, professor. I would still like to come with my brother.”

“This is a private matter, Mr. Malfoy. I promise that I will bring your brother with me when I go to the Great Hall a few minutes from now.”

Draco glanced at Harry. Harry was startled when he realized that he was getting asked if _he_ wanted Draco to come along. He shook his head, both in response to Draco’s question and in response to his own thoughts. Sometimes he could be surprised at how caring the Malfoys were, despite everything.

Draco sighed loudly and looked at Professor McGonagall once. “Please be aware that we are highly protective of my younger brother, professor. He was already stolen from us once.”

“ _Mr._ Malfoy,” McGonagall said, and she sounded genuinely shocked. “I hope you are not accusing me of kidnapping!”

“People who were really proud of being Gryffindors did, once,” Draco said darkly, and clasped Harry’s shoulder for a second before turning and going into the Great Hall.

Harry sighed and focused on the professor, who nodded and led him up to her office. She had a large tapestry on the wall of a lion streaking through a forest after what looked like a deer. Harry was looking at it when Professor McGonagall asked, “How are you, really, Harry?”

Harry turned around, wondering if he needed to be on his guard. But Professor McGonagall had taken off her hat and put it on her desk, and she just looked tired. He smiled at her. “I’m all right, professor.”

“I wish there was something I could do to change things back to the way they were.”

Harry just nodded, not saying anything. He wasn’t sure that _he_ wanted things to go back to the way they were. On the one hand, if they did, he would be Harry Potter again, with a normal name and the looks and friends he was used to. On the other hand, he would still be a kidnapped child, without parents, and with the fact that he’d have to go back to the Dursleys during the summer.

“I don’t know that I can do anything, legally,” Professor McGonagall continued, sticking her jaw out a little. “But if you are unhappy, I will do everything I can to remove you from the Malfoys’ custody.”

 _She doesn’t care whose kid I am._ That flowed through Harry like warm milk, and he thought it made his smile a little warmer, too. He shook his head. “No. I mean, it’s still new, and we have to get used to each other. I have to get used to looking like this. But I think I made up with Ron on the train today, and I want to be a Gryffindor.”

“If someone gives you trouble because of your family, you are to come to me at once, Mr. Potter.” Professor McGonagall paused a moment, then sighed and said, “I mean, Mr. Malfoy. Do you understand?”

“Thanks, professor,” Harry said, and beamed at her. “But Ron was the only one who was saying things I really minded, and like I said, I think I made up with him.”

Professor McGonagall nodded. “That is good news, Mr. Malfoy. I would hate to hear that you lost your oldest friendship because there was—nonsense in the past.”

That was probably the only way she would ever refer to it, Harry thought. But that made him sigh with relief. He would be irritated if all the professors made as big a deal as his—his _family_ did. “Thanks, professor. Um, one question?”

“Yes?”

“How are you going to distinguish between me and Draco in the classes we share? I mean, now that we have the same last name?”

“I presume that where I am _looking_ will be sufficient distinction, Mr. Malfoy, as I am not in the habit of turning my back on my classes.”

Harry nodded and left the office, both cowed and relieved. Professor McGonagall was going to be the same as ever, yes, but at least that meant at least one professor didn’t plan to call him by the compromise of a first name he still didn’t entirely like.

As he came down the last flight of stairs and turned towards the Great Hall, Harry jolted to a stop. Professor Snape was standing near the top of the staircase that led to the dungeons, staring at him.

His eyes were—devastated.

That was the only word Harry could come up with, but it wasn’t one he _wanted_ to come up with. He nodded briskly and strode past the professor towards the Great Hall, hoping that the man wouldn’t try to speak to him.

He didn’t. Harry slid in next to Ron at the Gryffindor table with a sigh, nodded to Draco, and began filling his plate.

“Have some potatoes, Harry,” Ron said, with every indication of cheer, pushing the plate over.

Harry smiled, then. Yes, everything was as normal as it was going to get.


	2. Chapter 2

“Mr. Malfoy, if I might have a moment of your time.”

Snape’s voice was as stiff as it always was around Harry. Harry reckoned that he couldn’t have expected any differently. He nodded and turned around. Ron and Hermione tensed on either side of him, but Harry waved them off. “Would you tell Professor Sprout that I’m going to be late to Herbology?”

Hermione nodded, her eyes on fire as she looked at Snape. She had been more protective of Harry ever since he had discovered who he was and Snape had still refused to call him anything but “Potter” in the last Potions classes before the Christmas holiday.

Not that Harry had much minded that at the time, honestly. He still felt more like a Potter than a Malfoy.

When they were alone at the top of the staircase that led to the dungeons, the same place that Harry had seen Snape standing the other day, Snape cleared his throat, but said nothing. Harry waited almost a full minute, then asked, “Sir?”

And Snape said something so surprising that Harry was glad he wasn’t nearer the stairs, or he would have fallen down them. “I must beg your pardon.”

“What?” Harry gaped at him, and then snapped his mouth shut. In the back of his mind, he could hear Mrs. Malfoy chiding away about his lack of manners. Of course, a second later part of him wished he’d kept it open.

Snape didn’t notice his rudeness. He was looking at Harry with eyes that Harry didn’t think saw anything about him at all. “I had misconceptions,” Snape breathed. “I thought you the son of an arrogant bully. James Potter made my life a hell when I was a Slytherin student. You had inherited that from him, I thought.” He took a breath like a dragon about to light a whole wildfire. “I was wrong about you.”

 _Because being the son of a Death Eater is so much better?_ Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy had been careful to tell him about Mr. Malfoy being under Imperius during the first war, but Harry knew when he was being fed a line of complete bollocks. However, he doubted that Snape wanted to hear about that. He probably already knew, anyway. Mr. Malfoy had been a Slytherin, and had hinted that he knew Snape.

Harry just nodded. “I—that’s all right, sir. Everyone thought I was James Potter’s son.”

“I should have known. You’re nothing like him.”

Harry started to bristle automatically, and then remembered that he was doing it in defense of his kidnappers. One of them, anyway. He calmed down in confusion, and Snape went on talking, this time with eyes that did seem to see Harry.

“You have a grace about you that comes from your mother.” For some reason, Snape swallowed then, a choking, clicking sound. Harry stared at him. Was Snape in love with Mrs. Malfoy? Harry did _not_ want to hear about that. “And what I thought of as arrogance was self-protection.”

Harry’s worries switched towards what Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy might have said about him to Snape. “I, well, thanks, but I should be getting along to Herbology,” he gabbled, taking a long step backwards.

“I wished you to know,” Snape said in a low, passionate voice that Harry thought would probably haunt his nightmares, “that I made an Unbreakable Vow to protect Lily Potter’s son. But I would never have done it if I had thought the Potters capable of kidnapping a child.”

Harry blinked at him. “Why did you do it in the first place, sir?”

“Ah, Harry, Severus! I had hoped I would find you together. I wanted to speak to you both.”

Harry smiled at Headmaster Dumbledore as he walked out of the Great Hall, but Snape twitched. He looked as if he had wanted to go on speaking to Harry in private. Well, Harry was thinking that it was probably a good thing they’d been interrupted. Snape wanted to say weird things, and was probably going to go on to _do_ weird things in a minute.

“Could you come to my office?” the Headmaster asked, his eyes shining, and Harry was glad to see that he looked happier than he had right after he found out Harry was a Malfoy. No one had known about that except Sirius Black and his pa—the Potters, so it wasn’t fair for Headmaster Dumbledore to blame himself.

“Henry.”

Harry blinked and turned to look at Professor Snape. Headmaster Dumbledore only smiled a little. “What was that, Severus?”

“Henry,” said Professor Snape strongly, his head up and his eyes pinning Harry so fiercely that he squirmed a little. “I received the letter from _his family_ as I’m sure you did, Headmaster. In the rare circumstances when we might need to address the younger Mr. Malfoy by his first name, his parents have said he’ll be going by Henry.”

The sheer _wrongness_ of hearing Snape stick up for him made Harry say hastily, “That’s the compromise we came up with, sir. I really didn’t like Aldebaran. But my friends still call me Harry.”

“And I hope we will always be friends, Harry.” The Headmaster stretched out his arm, his robe sweeping from it, making a motion of invitation. “Now, will you come with me?”

Professor Snape’s eyes had cooled a little by the time he turned to look at Harry. Harry shrugged, although he felt stung by it for reasons he didn’t want to name.

He wasn’t Harry Potter, but he was _Harry_ still, and being a Malfoy, let alone Henry, would have to take time.

*

“I’ll be sure to tell Professor Sprout where you were, Harry, so you don’t get in trouble. And I believe the next class you have is with Severus, so you’ll be able to speed right along to it.”

Harry just nodded as he watched Headmaster Dumbledore make tea. He was humming under his breath, nearly as loudly as the silver machines all around him whirred. There was a beautiful scarlet bird with some golden plumes sitting on a perch, who had sung to welcome them when they came into the office and who Headmaster Dumbledore said was a phoenix.

Professor Snape was sitting stiffly on the edge of his chair. He had refused the tea when the Headmaster offered it, so there were just two cups. Dumbledore handed one of them to Harry and said, “So, I assume that you have refused your father’s offer to ensure that you could get into Slytherin House, hmmm?”

Professor Snape stared between them. “ _What_?”

Harry held his head up. Mr. Malfoy had said a little about this, but not much. They still weren’t all that comfortable around each other, most of the time. “Yes, he said that he could make sure that I had another chance to sit under the Sorting Hat,” he said. “But I didn’t want it, sir. Honestly. I’m very happy in Gryffindor House.”

“I wish to understand this,” Professor Snape said, looking now as if he wished he did have a teacup so he could use it to make noise. “Why in the world would—Mr. Malfoy be a candidate for Slytherin House? Just because of his heritage? There have never been such exceptions made before.”

“They aren’t common, but they have happened.” Dumbledore waved his hand vaguely without taking his mildly interested gaze from Harry. “Besides, in this case, there is the fact that the Sorting Hat considered Mr. Malfoy for Slytherin originally, so this could be seen as restoring him to the original House he was destined for.”

Now Professor Snape _really_ looked as if he wanted to faint. “Is this because of—your heritage?” he asked, turning to stare at Harry directly.

Harry controlled the impulse to flinch. He really didn’t think either of them meant him harm. “I don’t think so, sir? The Sorting Hat just said that I would do well in Slytherin and I could be great. But I didn’t want to be there.”

“Why not?” Snape looked as if he was ready to believe that Harry was the son of James Potter all over again.

Harry coughed. “I had met, well, I met my brother on the train and he made fun of Ron. Ron was the first friend I ever had. So I didn’t want to go into Slytherin because I knew I’d have to deal with Draco.”

Snape closed his eyes. Harry half-hoped Draco was going to get a scolding later. As far as Harry was concerned, Draco deserved most of the scoldings he got.

“Bet that as it may,” Headmaster Dumbledore said, and now he looked tired and old, “I am glad that you do not wish to change Houses, Harry—”

“Henry,” Snape said.

“I already talked to you about that, sir.” Harry glanced at him, and hoped that he made it a glance instead of a glare. Draco wouldn’t let him hear the end of it if he thought Harry was rude to his Head of House.

Even though, most of the time, Snape was rude _first._

“It is inappropriate for a professor to be addressing you by a diminutive of your chosen first name.” Snape folded his arms and leaned in to glare at the Headmaster, who had put down his own teacup and was watching everything as if it was a play.

“You said that you needed to talk to me, sir?” As far as Harry as concerned, they’d got off-topic. All this about Slytherin House and what name he should have and the rest of it was just rot. Harry turned to face the Headmaster, who, after a moment more of a staring contest with Snape, nodded and turned back to Harry with a smile.

“Yes.” Dumbledore’s face got really old all of a sudden, and he sighed. “You know that there was a reason Voldemort targeted you.”

Snape hissed like he didn’t like the name Voldemort. He could put up with it, Harry decided. “Yes, sir. But last year you said that I was too young to know that…”

He trailed off, and this time, Dumbledore filled in the silence. “Well, as it turns out, the reason may no longer apply, as you are not the Potter child all of us believed you to be.” For a second, his eyes were bright and searching as they turned on Harry. “I never heard exactly what happened when you went to question Sirius Black in the Ministry.”

“Headmaster.” Snape sounded furious about something, but Harry didn’t think he could guess what.

Harry sighed and said, “Black said that my par—I mean, the Potters couldn’t have a child. So he thought he would steal one of Mrs. Malfoy’s twins and give them one, so that at least that one could be raised to be a good person. I had the impression that he thought it was a good thing to do, and funny.”

“Ah.” Dumbledore seemed to age again. “Well, the people you think you know may surprise you at any time…”

“I _always_ knew Black and Potter,” Snape muttered, but he had his hands folded in his lap and didn’t seem like he would stand up and strangle Harry even if he was furious about something or other.

“Yes, Severus,” Headmaster Dumbledore said, in a quelling voice. He studied Harry, and then nodded. “I believe you deserve this knowledge. There was a prophecy that a child born at the end of July would defeat Voldemort.”

Harry stared at him. “And I just got targeted because of _that_? With all the thousands of children who must have been born at the end of July?”

“A child born to parents who had thrice defied him. That did rather cut it down.” But then the Headmaster sighed. “Except nothing fits, of course. I believe that you and young Mr. Malfoy were born in early June, and your parents did _not_ defy Voldemort three times.”

His eyes seemed to be asking a question, but Harry didn’t know what it was. He just said, “Yeah, sir, it was early June.”

Dumbledore nodded. “So while the prophecy does not appear to hold, you _did_ survive an attack by Voldemort, and it is unlikely that he will let that go. So I wanted to let you know that some of the circumstances might have changed, but I am still here to support you and will be happy to provide any backup I can.”

“Um. Thank you, sir.” Harry thought back to one of Mr. Malfoy’s tirades about Dumbledore that he’d witnessed and barely kept from shaking his head. His life was so strange now.

“Off to class, now, both of you,” the Headmaster said, with a flap of his hand that seemed to say Snape was just another student. Harry shivered as he walked out the office door. It was bad enough dealing with Snape as a professor, but it would a ton worse if he was a student who Harry would probably be required to be polite to because, of course, he would be Draco’s best friend.

“Henry! There you are!”

Harry looked down the corridor as he and Snape stepped out past the gargoyle, and blinked. “Draco? Aren’t you supposed to be in Herbology?”

“So were you.” Draco gave Professor Snape a suspicious glance. “When we realized you weren’t there, Professor Sprout excused me to look for you.”

“Oh.” Harry supposed he still wasn’t used to having a protective brother who followed him everywhere, or would have if they were in the same House and Harry was minded to put up with his nonsense. “I’m fine. I was just with the Headmaster. He wanted to speak to me and Professor Snape.”

Professor Snape shook his head at that, and gave Harry one more inscrutable glance before disappearing down the corridor. Draco walked beside him determinedly as they went towards the Potions classroom.

“I appreciate you being here,” Harry started, because one thing he had learned was that he _had_ to show he appreciated Draco or nothing would get done, “but you don’t have to hold my hand as if I was a baby, you know.”

“I know.” Draco’s eyes were distant. “But I have to guard you.”

“Draco, I’m _fine._ ”

“You got taken from us once, Henry. Who knows what other people are planning? It could happen again if we don’t watch over you.”

“Is that why there were Tracking Charms on my trunk and my clothes?”

“Oh. You found those?” Draco’s casual act would have worked better if he hadn’t stumbled to a stop for a second.

“Yes.” Harry stopped and turned to face his brother. Draco did the same thing, and Harry sighed and patted him awkwardly on the shoulder. He still didn’t really know what to _do_ with his brother. Draco seemed to have no problem swinging his arm around Harry’s shoulders and even hugging him sometimes, but Harry had never had anyone his own age to do that with. Dudley was hardly the hugging type, except in the sense of “I’ll hold him still and you hit him.”

“We just want to know where you are,” Draco said quietly. “Like I said, what if someone else is planning to take you from us?”

“Who would this person be?” Harry folded his arms.

“I don’t know.” Draco’s eyes were so haunted that he abruptly looked ten years older, a lot more like Mr. Malfoy. “But my mother trusted her cousin and invited him over to the house after we were born, and there weren’t many people in that trusted little group. Someone else could be out there. Someone who doesn’t think it’s right that the _Boy-Who-Lived_ is with the Malfoys. Even someone who doesn’t think that it’s right for the Malfoys to have a son who was instrumental in defeating the Dark Lord.”

“His name is _Voldemort._ ”

Draco flinched hard enough to almost fall over, and shook his head as he turned away. “Whatever you say, Henry.”

“Harry,” Harry muttered, but he could tell from the set of Draco’s back that he wasn’t going to get Draco to say it. He sighed and followed him the rest of the way to the Potions classroom.

*

“You all right, mate?”

Harry nodded to Ron, and tried to ignore the feeling that he should be looking over at Draco on the Slytherin side of the room. He wasn’t sure what would be worse at the moment, to see Draco looking back or to see him turned the other direction. “Fine. Professor Dumbledore wanted to talk to me about some things that have changed now that I’m a Malfoy.”

“Oh, yeah.” Ron sighed and drooped his shoulders for a second. Then he shook his head and went back to crushing dandelion roots with the side of the knife. Harry had showed him how to do that after some lessons he’d had himself from Mrs. Malfoy during the holiday, and it seemed to work better. “I know you’re fine. It’s just that—”

“Silence, Mr. Weasley.”

Ron being Ron, he just waited until Professor Snape walked past, with yet another funny look in Harry’s direction, and then went back to talking, more softly than before. “Halfway thought me and Fred and George were going to have to come get you out of prison with another flying car. But I suppose in Hogwarts there wouldn’t be bars on the windows.”

Harry grinned and started to answer, but Draco said loudly, “What?”

“Mr. Malfoy?” Professor Snape asked in surprise, looking over his shoulder.

Draco had slammed his knife down in the middle of the table and was staring directly at Ron. “ _What_ did you say?”

“I said that we would have had to get _Harry_ out of prison the way we did over the summer— _oomph_!”

Harry had stomped on Ron’s foot at the same time as Hermione had done it on the other side, but it was too late. Draco had gone paler than Harry knew was possible given the color of their skin, and was shaking his head a little, as if trying to bring something into focus that he could barely see.

“This is quite enough of an interruption to our Potions class,” said Professor Snape, his voice tight and low. “Weasley, five points from Gryffindor for your outburst. The rest of you, _return_ to your potions.”

For a long moment, it seemed Draco was having a real struggle about whether he should, but in the end he picked up his knife and returned to cutting. Harry sighed in relief. With all luck, the comment would blow over, and he could tell Draco—when Draco had calmed down a little—that Ron was exaggerating.

“You _should_ tell someone, you know,” Hermione muttered from the other side of Ron.

Harry only nodded, and said nothing. Maybe he should, but he was going to choose when to do it, not have it happen because of a stray comment Ron had blurted out.

“Sorry, mate.”

Harry shrugged with one shoulder at Ron. “It’s fine. Not your fault.”

Ron seemed happy enough with that, and went back to helping Harry make their potion. And if Harry was getting two concerned, narrow-eyed glances, one from the Gryffindor side and one from the Slytherin side, it wasn’t like he had to turn and look at them.

*

Harry looked up sharply the next morning at breakfast. Draco was walking into the Great Hall and straight towards the Gryffindor table. That would have been all right, if a little weird, except Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy were behind him.

“Oh, shit,” Harry said under his breath.

“Harry, language!” Then Hermione looked in the direction he had, and blinked. “They—don’t look like they’re here to bring a book you lost.”

“They’d send an owl to do that,” Harry said, and then became aware that he sounded inane. He had been too happy with the fact that Draco hadn’t confronted him at the end of Potions yesterday. He should have _realized_ something was a little off about that. He cleared his throat and stood up. “If you’ll excuse me?”

The Malfoys were close enough to hear him make the excuse. Harry thought that maybe Mrs. Malfoy would smile because he’d been polite, but she only gave him a strained look and said, “Henry, please, we need to talk.”

Harry grimaced and followed her and Mr. Malfoy towards the stairs that he knew would lead to the hospital wing. Draco fell into place behind him, and Harry shuddered once and then refused to look back at him. It was like being guarded and escorted along, the way the Aurors had brought Sirius Black into the Ministry.

He did _not_ want to talk about this, but if he had to, he could at least be reasonable about it, and then everyone else would be reasonable about it, too.

Hopefully.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For now, this is the end of the story, but I certainly won't be opposed to continuing it in the future.

“Why did you never tell us you were abused?”

Harry stared at Mr. Malfoy, who had begun the interrogation. _Not reasonable in any fashion, no._ “Because until this year I didn’t know who I was? Why would I just randomly walk up to you in the Diagon Alley bookshop and start telling you?”

Mr. Malfoy’s lips tightened. “You are being unreasonable, Henry. Please understand the question in the spirit it was meant.”

“Then maybe you can sound less like you’re accusing me of having abused myself and kept the secret just to annoy you. _Sir._ ”

There was a long pause. They were in the infirmary, the same place that Harry had had to find out he was Aldebaran Malfoy. At least that awful name was gone, but the tension in the air was the same as it had been then, and Mr. Malfoy had the same forbidding expression on his face that said he wouldn’t be getting out of this.

Or maybe this was worse, because they looked hurt, but Harry didn’t have the same feeling of anger to defend himself from their hurt. Before, he’d had no idea he was a Malfoy and he hadn’t been delighted by the news, and he’d been sure that no one could blame him for not being delighted.

But now he felt the squirm in his stomach that said maybe he _should_ have told them, _maybe_ they would have understood.

“I know that you did not abuse yourself,” Mrs. Malfoy said, her voice very soft. Mr. Malfoy sat back and seemed content to let her take over, but his eyes were still raking over Harry in a way that Harry very much did not like. “And I know this might seem unreasonable to you. You’re not used to having adults care. But you’re our _son_. We need to know.”

Her voice was trembling by the time she got to the end of the sentence, and Harry glanced at her and—

Yeah. He was making his mother _cry._ Bloody hell.

Harry stared down at his pale hands and said, “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want anyone to know. I didn’t want to seem weak. And when people came near to guessing it before, they never did anything. They thought I was making things up. And I didn’t know what you would do.”

“If you thought we would not love you—”

Mrs. Malfoy had reached out for him. Harry sat back a little further, noting with some hope that Draco looked nearly as unhappy as he did. Good, big long emotional discussions weren’t a Malfoy family _thing._

“Not that. I didn’t know what you would do to the Dursleys. I know you hate Muggles.” He looked at Mr. Malfoy. “I thought you were going to torture or kill them. I know what it’s like being an orphan, and I have a cousin—I mean, someone I thought was a cousin. I wouldn’t want to have Dudley have that.”

Mrs. Malfoy abruptly stopped reaching for him and sat back down. Harry watched her. He wondered if this was going to be one of those compromise things; Mrs. Malfoy had said over the Christmas holiday that Mr. Malfoy and Draco would try to compromise hating all Muggles and Muggleborns, and Harry would have to compromise, too. But Harry just couldn’t compromise about making Dudley an orphan.

“It was your abuse,” Mr. Malfoy said after a long moment of struggle where everyone watched him. “If you do not want me to harm your kidnapper’s family, I will not.” Harry nodded and kept quiet about the “kidnapper” thing. “But I do want to know what happened.”

“Please, Henry,” Mrs. Malfoy added. “When Draco sent us the letter yesterday—it was hard to sleep, thinking of all the horrible things that might have happened to you.”

Harry sighed and glanced at Draco. He didn’t look as if he’d been sleepless, but he caught Harry’s eye and nodded emphatically in a way that said he wanted to know, too.

“They really hated me, and my magic,” Harry said. “I didn’t know about the magic part at first, though. I just knew that sometimes strange things would happen around me and I couldn’t control them, and that was what got me called a freak.”

Mrs. Malfoy’s hand reached out and gripped Mr. Malfoy’s tightly. Mr. Malfoy’s lips looked as if they were on the verge of vanishing. “And what else happened?”

“They made me do chores.” Harry didn’t think that would be so bad given that the Malfoys had house-elves and they were all kept strictly away from the family. Draco probably didn’t even know what the elves did on a daily basis. But they winced and gasped anyway. “Cooking and gardening and things like that. And they—well, I didn’t have a bedroom for the first ten years I was there.”

“Did you sleep in the kitchen?” Draco blurted, as if he had been on the verge of asking that for minutes.

Harry shook his head. “No. A cot in a cupboard under the stairs.”

Mrs. Malfoy buried her head in Mr. Malfoy’s shoulder. Draco got up and came over and hugged Harry. Harry gave him a hug back, confused, not knowing what to say. It felt like jagged shards of glass in his throat to be telling someone, but it was also _over._

“I can’t believe it,” Draco was whispering over and over again when Harry paid attention to him. “I made fun of you and I acted like I was so much better than you, and—I can’t believe it. I should never have teased you for being poor and not knowing anything last year. I’m sorry, Henry.”

Harry opened his mouth to say that Draco sounded like he was only sorry because Harry had turned out to be his _brother_ and Draco shouldn’t make fun of people no matter how poor they were, but Mr. Malfoy spoke again. “And is that the end of it?”

Harry squirmed, his eyes on the floor. The cupboard was bad enough. Did he really have to tell the rest of it?

“Henry.”

The name helped brace him, oddly, even though it still didn’t feel like his name. The abuse had happened to Harry Potter, and Harry Potter would never be himself in the same way again. He would never have to go back to the Dursleys again.

And sooner or later, he did have to _trust_ Mr. Malfoy when he said he wouldn’t go torture and kill the Dursleys.

“They punished me sometimes by taking food away from me,” he said. There was such absolute silence that he looked up, and had to look away again from the fury on Mr. Malfoy’s face. Mrs. Malfoy still had her head buried.

Draco tightened his arms around Harry.

“How often?” Draco asked hoarsely.

Harry shook his head. “There was no pattern. When they got really upset, it was longer. They told me I wasn’t going to have a meal for a week after I talked to a boa constrictor at a zoo and accidentally made the glass vanish so the snake got out and scared my cousin—I mean, Dudley. But they forgot about that a day later and fed me again because they wanted me to be strong enough to do chores. Then they would make me skip dinner if I burned something, or breakfast if they thought I was going to get ‘spoiled’ later with lunch at my primary school.”

“And no one did anything.” Mrs. Malfoy’s voice sounded almost broken.

“No,” Harry said, looking up. She was staring at him again, but tears still trembled in her eyes, and she was clutching Mr. Malfoy’s hand like she wouldn’t be able to stand up without it. “Sometimes a teacher asked me questions, but the Dursleys were pretty good at lying to get out of it. And my cousin made sure that other kids thought I was a freak, too.”

“What did he do?”

Harry shrugged. “Chased me with his friends. Beat me up. Lied to get me in trouble. Made sure I had no friends.”

“Shit,” Draco said, and then cringed as Mr. Malfoy glared at him. “That’s why you reacted so strongly to me taunting Weasley on the train. I thought you were exaggerating when you said he was your first friend, but…”

“He really was,” Harry agreed quietly. Hesitantly, he hugged his brother back. He wondered why it was so much easier to think of Draco as his brother than it was to think of the Malfoys as his parents. Maybe just because he knew Draco better. “I didn’t have anybody who would try and be loyal to me and care about me until then.”

“We care about you, Henry,” Mrs. Malfoy said, and then she stood up and walked over so she could hug both Draco and him. “So much.”

Harry nodded and squirmed a little closer. He was finally beginning to believe that.

He knew it would take some time. For one thing, they hadn’t really interacted with his friends yet. Mr. Malfoy and Draco would have to stop talking about Hermione like she was worthless, and Draco would have to stop taunting Ron.

But maybe they could be a family in a shorter time than he’d thought.

*

“Shouldn’t I go back to Gryffindor Tower?” Harry asked, when he heard a distant rush of footsteps and realized it must be people going to dinner.

“We would like you to come home for tonight,” Mr. Malfoy said, quietly but firmly. “There are still some conversations we would like to have, and it’s better to have those conversations in the privacy of the Manor rather than at the school.”

“I—is that even allowed?” Harry blinked. He thought it was unusual enough for parents to be allowed to visit their children during the school year. He couldn’t remember ever seeing them here.

“It will be allowed because I request it.” Mr. Malfoy stood. “Headmaster Dumbledore is still somewhat _distracted_ by the part he thought our child had to play.”

Harry frowned as he watched Mr. Malfoy go. “He’s taking advantage of Headmaster Dumbledore being upset because he put me with the wrong people,” he muttered.

“Of course he is.” Mrs. Malfoy was just holding him tighter. “If everything had fallen out as it should have, your father would not have that pull over the Headmaster, Henry. But it fell out _this_ way, and the least of the debt the Headmaster owes you is letting you spend some time with your family.”

“Will Snape be upset with me?”

“What does Professor Snape have to say about it?” Mrs. Malfoy pulled back to stare at him.

“I don’t know, he said something about making a vow to protect me because he thought I was a Potter, and then he insisted on coming with me to the Headmaster’s office and saying that Professor Dumbledore should call me Henry.”

“And when were you intending to tell us that you visited the Headmaster’s office?”

“I just did,” Harry pointed out, and hated the way that he got all stiff. Then again, he also hated the way that Mrs. Malfoy made it sound like it was his fault for not telling them about something that had only happened a few hours ago.

“Why was he calling you Harry?” Draco interrupted.

“Because he said we were friends.” Harry would have said more, but Mrs. Malfoy drew in a sharp breath and shook her head. The tears had disappeared from her eyes, which Harry supposed was something to be grateful for.

“That man is trying to retain a degree of control over you that is inappropriate,” she said. “He needs to be reminded that he is your Headmaster and your abuser, not your friend and not your Head of House.”

“He’s not my—”

Mr. Malfoy stepped back into the hospital wing, wearing a small, satisfied smile. “We have permission for Henry to come home with us for the night. He’ll need to be back right after breakfast tomorrow, but with Floo, that’s no problem.”

“Ugh, I hate the Floo,” Harry muttered.

He hadn’t intended to be heard, but Mrs. Malfoy said, “All the more reason to get used to it, Henry. Something you haven’t experienced often is bound to be difficult.”

 _Like being told that I’m part of a family and my name is Henry?_ Harry thought, but he kept quiet as they escorted him over to the hospital wing’s Floo and asked Madam Pomfrey for the powder.

The last thought had actually struck a spark inside him. He thought about it all the way through the Floo, and the horrible whirling, and the way that it spat him out of the fireplace onto the floor and Draco laughed at him and Mr. Malfoy cast a charm that cleaned the soot off him.

Maybe being Henry Malfoy _would_ be more natural when he heard it more often. Maybe he should try to be around the people who said it, too, as long as they were kind to his friends, and not just the people who called him Harry.

Maybe.

*

“How worried were you that I would seek out and kill the Muggles, son?”

Harry refused to meet Mr. Malfoy’s eyes for a few minutes. They were in the formal White Sitting Room where Harry had only been a few times, mostly for lessons in Malfoy history and wizarding politics. Mr. Malfoy had told him he didn’t have to study beyond a certain level, but there were things he had to know that Harry Potter wouldn’t have had any idea about.

“I was really convinced,” Harry finally said.

“Why?”

Harry looked up. “Because—you followed Voldemort during the first war. I _know_ that. And I know you said it was the Imperius Curse, but I don’t believe you.”

Mr. Malfoy gazed back at him thoughtfully. He looked a lot like Draco and less like him, Harry thought. Which was ridiculous, because he and Draco were identical, and he knew that. But it was the way it felt, anyway. As if Draco was closer to his father because he had grown up with him, and so his face was pointier and his eyes were colder like Mr. Malfoy’s.

“Perhaps some aspects of this discussion should wait until you are older,” Mr. Malfoy said. “But one thing I _can_ tell you is that things have changed because of who people thought you were. I will no longer follow the Dark Lord, should he return. I will no longer freely use the word ‘Mudblood’ or attack Muggles.”

“Because of me.”

Mr. Malfoy nodded.

“Not because you decided on your own to be a good person.”

Mr. Malfoy settled back on the couch with his arm stretched over the back of it. He wore dove-grey robes that were only a few shades darker than the couch. Harry thought he looked elegant, and also that he himself would never look that way.

“What does _good person_ mean?” Mr. Malfoy murmured. “I did things that I am not proud of. On the other hand, I promise you that Headmaster Dumbledore and Professor Snape have done the same. They were allowed to find redemption. From what you said about the meeting in the Headmaster’s office, you are even willing to allow Professor Snape a chance to reinvent himself with you, and he was horrible to you personally in a way that I was not. Why does he have the chance and I do not?”

“I—” Harry stopped, because when Mr. Malfoy put it that way, it didn’t make a lot of sense.

Mr. Malfoy nodded calmly. “I know that part of it might be because he is a professor at your school whom you only have to deal with at certain times, and not your Head of House. I, on the other hand, am your father. Our connection is permanent, and one that cannot help but distress you.”

“It’s _weird_ ,” Harry said firmly.

“I would like to ask you a question, Henry, and please answer me truthfully.”

“Is this about the Dursleys?”

“It touches on them only indirectly.” Mr. Malfoy sat there and was patient again until Harry nodded, at least. “Now. Did you have _any_ adult who cared about you when you were younger? You mentioned that some of your teachers recognized something was wrong but your—keepers managed to talk themselves out of it. Was there anyone who maintained a relationship with you outside that? Any neighbor? Anyone who tried their best to teach you? Another Muggle, or even wizard or Squib, who watched over you?”

“Not unless you count Mrs. Figg. She was the neighbor that my rela—I mean, the Dursleys left me with when they didn’t want to be bothered with me.”

For some reason, Mr. Malfoy had gone absolutely still and tense, but Harry didn’t know why. That was one of the least objectionable things the Dursleys had done, all told. “You said her name was Figg? Do you know what her first name was?”

“Arabella, I think?” In Harry’s mind was a hazy memory of Aunt Petunia saying that once.

Mr. Malfoy closed his eyes. “I know her,” he explained, while Harry was still staring at him wondering exactly what was going on. “A Squib, one of Dumbledore’s followers. She was probably there to watch over to you.” He sneered. “And it did nothing, of course.”

“I never knew that,” Harry said softly. Mrs. Figg had never spoken to him about the Dursleys’ treatment of him. She might not know some of it, like the being in a cupboard part, but she would surely have seen him wearing big clothes and how thin he was?

There really _hadn’t_ been anyone who had cared about him before he came to Hogwarts.

Harry sat there with a sinking sensation inside him, and almost missed Mr. Malfoy’s next question. “Sorry, sir, I didn’t hear you,” he said, shaking his head.

“You don’t need to call me sir. I would be pleased if you would refer to me as Father.”

Harry tightened his mouth and looked away. “Sorry. It’s too soon.”

Mr. Malfoy hesitated, then nodded. “All right. What happened during your first year at Hogwarts? Was there any adult who cared for you then? There were confusing rumors that, frankly, I didn’t pay much attention to. Draco was jealous of you then, in your former identity, and spouted so much nonsense that I shut my ears to it.”

Harry smiled fleetingly. Draco had been really different last year. “Well, I mean, Professor McGonagall cares, I think, but Ron and Hermione and I found out that someone was trying to steal the Philosopher’s Stone from under the school, and we told her about it, and she just told us it was fine and we shouldn’t worry about it. And of course it wasn’t fine, and someone really _was_ trying to steal it.”

He looked up to find Mr. Malfoy with his hand over his face. “The Philosopher’s Stone,” he said flatly. “The thief was the Dark Lord?”

Harry nodded. “His spirit, anyway. He was possessing Professor Quirrell, the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor. No one noticed _that_ , either,” he added, a little disgusted. How stupid were the professors?

“How did you stop him?”

Harry described getting through the obstacle course with Ron and Hermione, making sure to talk about how much they had contributed and especially how Hermione had solved the Potions riddle right away. He wanted his family to start _respecting_ his friends. Mr. Malfoy listened with a frown and nodded several times.

“That will make you more of a target when the Dark Lord returns,” he said, when Harry had finished. “And that is all the more reason that I will not be going back to his service.”

Harry swallowed. “Then—I can trust you? Not like the other adults?”

“Of course.” Mr. Malfoy’s voice was soft and hurt. “You’re my son. I love you.”

Harry studied his hands intently, but then Mr. Malfoy got up and came and knelt down in front of him, which was just sort of embarrassing, and put his hands over Harry’s and looked him earnestly in the face.

“I know it’s hard for you to hear that, Henry. But I _do_ love you, and nothing pains me more than not having been there for the first eleven years of your life. I will trust you, and believe in you if want to tell me something, and give you everything I can give you to make up for not being there. I made mistakes, and more than mistakes. I ask that you give me the chance to make up for them.”

Harry nodded. “All right. Thanks.” He leaned in and gave Mr. Malfoy a stiff hug, hoping it wasn’t too bad, thinking it probably was.

From the tight hug Mr. Malfoy gave him in return, he found nothing wrong with it. And Harry thought maybe, if things changed, that he could call the man “Father.”

*

“Father told you that you were part of the family, right?”

“Yes,” Harry said. He had left the dining room after dinner and promptly been ambushed by Draco. And his brother was clinging to him as if Harry was about to combust, or disappear, or something. Harry patted his back. “I mean, all of you have. You and Mother and Father.” The names tasted salty and sour in his mouth, but he said them to please Draco.

“What is this all about?” he added, pulling back to study Draco, because he seemed more upset than he had been so far.

“My little brother was _abused._ ”

The way Draco said it should have made Harry feel strange again, like they were talking about someone who really wasn’t him, but the stormy look in Draco’s eyes made it different. He was staring at Harry, and he had his arms around him, and he really seemed _tormented._ Like he wanted to do something to help, but he knew there was no way he could go back in time and make the Dursleys be kind to Harry, the way he probably wanted. Or kidnap him back.

“You’re my little brother,” Draco said in a low voice. “I’m going to protect you, and I’m going to make up for what they did, and I’m going to show you that life is better now. All right? No matter what happens.”

“All right,” Harry said, touched despite himself. He had sometimes wanted siblings, but not often. Dealing with Dudley was enough trouble. But a sibling like _this_ , he could want.

Draco hugged him again, fiercely, and then said, “Mother would like to see you in the little sitting room off her bedroom.”

Then Draco turned around and ran away towards a part of the house that Harry knew held the library. Harry just blinked after him. Maybe Draco was as embarrassed as Harry sometimes got because of hugging?

 _Maybe,_ Harry thought, and headed towards what he hoped wouldn’t be a confrontation.

*

Harry had privately wondered since he’d moved into Malfoy Manor during the Christmas holiday why Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy had separated bedrooms, but it didn’t seem like something he could ask about, so he hadn’t. Now he almost wished he had. Mrs. Malfoy was sitting in the little room—“little” meaning that it was almost the size of the Dursleys’ kitchen and drawing room combined—with a pale face.

Harry bit his lip. “Um, do you want me to call a house-elf?” The Malfoys kept the house-elves so strictly away from humans that she probably didn’t, but he didn’t know how to revive her if she fainted.

“No,” Mrs. Malfoy whispered. “Please, sit down.”

Harry took a seat on a huge fluffy white chair a few feet away from her. She went on watching him like she was going to faint. This was as far away as she could get from the happy woman who had taken pictures of him at Christmas just a few weeks ago, and Harry didn’t know what to _do._

“I am so sorry,” Mrs. Malfoy whispered.

“Why? What the Dursleys did wasn’t your fault.”

“If I’d protected you better, if I’d made sure that the nursery was warded even against people who I trusted, then you would have grown up where you were supposed to grow up.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Harry repeated more strongly. “I think lots of people trusted Sirius Black, even when they shouldn’t have. It was like—everything was just a joke to him.” He swallowed. “And I hope that I’m not a disappointment to you because of where I was raised.”

Mrs. Malfoy abruptly seemed to _see_ him again, instead of just stare dreadfully at the wall. She gasped and got up to wrap her arms around him again, cradling him close. “No, of course not,” she whispered. “Never, ever, Henry. Of course I wish you had been safe and known all along who you were and never been abused. But I could _never_ be disappointed that you lived and that you are who you are.”

_Yes, she is, or she would have let me keep the name Harry._

But even that voice wasn’t as strong as it would have been a little while ago. Harry leaned himself against her, his _mother_ , and let himself feel her. The warm arms hugging him and the warm breath against his hair. The fierce way she held him.

Would Lily Potter have held him like that, if she’d lived?

Harry didn’t know, and he didn’t want to think about it. He hugged Mrs. Malfoy back and tried not to think about “real” families and who he “really” was and whether he wanted to be Harry Potter or Henry Malfoy more. What mattered was that he was here, and he had a mother, and she was hugging him.

It was enough, for a while.

*

“Are you all right, Harry?”

Hermione’s eyes were warm and sympathetic. Harry smiled at her and sat down next to her in Transfiguration. Ron was on the other side of the classroom saying something forceful to Seamus. Apparently he’d played some kind of prank on Ron at breakfast this morning, and Ron was saying he already had enough pranks from the twins to deal with.

“I am,” Harry said, and opened his book. He’d done his Transfiguration essay over the Christmas holidays, and had Mr. Malfoy read it over and Mrs. Malfoy give him some tips that he could add in. He didn’t think it was perfect, but it was better than a lot of the essays he’d written in the past.

“Why did you leave the school like that yesterday?”

“The remark Ron made in Potions,” Harry said, lowering his voice. The last thing he wanted was to have the other students who seemed to have forgotten about it staring at him again. “Draco figured out from it that I’d been abused, and he went and told his parents. Then they wanted to talk to me, and, well, I got to spend the night at Malfoy Manor.”

“They’re your parents, too, aren’t they?”

Hermione just meant the question to help him think, Harry knew, but he found himself pausing and staring down at his Transfiguration essay again. The words that Mr. Malfoy had read over with him. The information that Mrs. Malfoy had helped him add. The reminder of the chapters that Draco had talked about while sitting next to him.

 _Were_ they? Did he think of them that way?

He wanted to, was the answer. While at the same time he wanted to remain Harry Potter. He wanted to have a family and a brother and a home, but he also wanted his old name and his old looks and his old friends.

It seemed like he would get to keep “Harry” and his friends, if not the way he used to look. But what would happen with the family and the brother and the home, if he kept pushing them away? If he never got used to them?

Maybe, just like he needed to hear “Henry” more often to get used to that name, he needed to think of Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy as “Father” and “Mother” and Malfoy Manor as “home” to make them more familiar.

“Harry? I didn’t mean to upset you. I know it’s really fraught—”

“No, Hermione, it’s okay,” Harry reassured her, touching her shoulder. “You just gave me something to think about.”

He watched Professor McGonagall sweep into the room. She began calling the roll just as she always did in the first class after a holiday, and she met his eyes and pronounced the name “Mr. Malfoy” without hesitation.

Could he do the same thing?

 _I want to try,_ Harry thought, and looked across the room to where Draco was sitting with the other Slytherins. Draco caught his eye and nodded, although Harry doubted he knew what he was really agreeing to. His brother just supported him because he was his brother, and Harry probably seemed to be looking for reassurance.

Maybe Harry would start relying on him for that reassurance.

Maybe, the next time a stranger introduced themselves to him, Harry would say that his name was “Henry Malfoy.”

Maybe, tonight, he would write a letter with the names “Mother” and “Father” in it, and mean it.

He would try it. And see what happened.

 **The End**.


End file.
